"Our biggest arguments have been when we're on the road and we get lost," he says. "We have arguments then like we'd never usually have. GPS is the thing that I've found that saved our band — and our relationship. It's our miracle, our relationship counselor. Spread the word to other bands."

Long before acquiring this magical piece of relationship-saving technology, Johnson and Schifino met at a party, when they were art students at the Brooklyn campus of the Pratt Institute. They started dating first; then a friend gave Schifino assorted pieces of a drum set, and Johnson acquired a keyboard, and they began to experiment in the bedroom of their apartment, with a towel muffling the drums in order to avoid disturbing any sound-sensitive neighbors.

"It wasn't an idea to start a band," says Johnson. "We'd just work out a beat, I'd work out a melody, and she'd tell me to make it faster." The lyrics come last, and they're often nonsensical — sometimes Johnson simply Frankensteins them together, via random selected sentences from pages of Schifino's writing.

Eventually, a friend talked them into playing a gig, and that led to more shows, a self-titled album (and a sophomore release, coming this January on Fader Label), and the inevitable intermingling of life as a couple and life as a band — which, Johnson says, for Matt and Kim, are not two separate entities.

"There's no difference at all distinguishing between the two. There's no clocking out. We spend so much time together that we only have one cell phone. And that pretty much sums us up."

The SubmarinesI think it might be harder than it is easier.

That's the candid truth that John Dragonetti, one half of the synth-tastic, Postal Service-y power-pop band the Submarines (who'll play the Middle East in February), gives me on the phone from Los Angeles. Dragonetti is a West Coast dweller now, but he and wife/co-Submarine Blake Hazard had their musical (and romantic) beginnings in Boston. In the late '90s, a friend introduced Dragonetti — who had attended Berklee for two semesters and played in a psych-pop band called Jack Drag — to Hazard, a solo pop singer-songwriter.

"I loved her voice," says Dragonetti. "She was the first person I had worked with who could really sing." The two began collaborating, and eventually embarked on a European tour together, though they were playing backup for each other, rather than performing as one band.

"We fell in love when we were touring," says Dragonetti. "Touring can be a lot of fun with your partner, because you're sharing this crazy experience." Four years later, the two followed one another across the country to LA, eyes wide with visions of Hollywood success. Before that could happen, though, they broke up.

Heartbroken, Dragonetti and Hazard both tumbled headfirst into songwriting, each channeling their pain and loneliness into music. And then, after six months ("It felt like forever," says Dragonetti), they gravitated toward one another again, reconciled, and began to navigate the mass of emotional dirges they'd accumulated. At the time, they saw this collection of songs merely as time capsules — musical snapshots of a particular emotional state of mind — and also maybe a chance to feel closure with regard to this dark time-gap in their relationship. They resumed work on that material — this time together — and then Nettwerk, a Canadian record label, saw their musical relevance and released the album (Declare a New State!).

Galaxie 500 Byron Coley once suggested that this Boston trio’s career aspirations began so modestly that getting a single into the local bargain bins was Galaxie 500’s main long-term goal.

Going steady Whenever Drug Rug come up in the press (which is happening more and more lately), writers seem to find it hard to separate the band from the relationship between founding members Sarah Cronin and Tommy Allen. Cronin and Allen are not crazy about this.

Dean and Britta Just as Luna’s final album, Rendezvous (Jetset), was a portrait of a band facing an uncertain demise, Back Numbers is an album about moving on.

2009: The year in local pop When I think back on 2009, I feel the same pleasant discomfort you get at the end of a John Hughes movie, when suddenly all the jocks and dorks and punks are good friends. This year, hardcore denizens of time-worn niches came out of hiding and acted all presentable and all sorts of scenes and sounds went behind the bleachers for some unlikely scores.

On with the shows . . . If freezing your ass off builds character, music fans should prepare to develop way too much character over the next few months.

PRIDE AT 39 | June 01, 2009 Not to downplay this year's Pride Week or anything, but the annual weeklong mélange of events geared toward New England's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is just one year shy of its 40th anniversary. Which makes it sort of like the night before Christmas.

THE CRASH COURSE | May 06, 2009 It was a sunny but brisk Friday afternoon in March when my bike was hit.

EAT IT, HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL! | May 06, 2009 It's a Thursday afternoon at Lexington High, and 20 or so students have congregated in a music room surrounded by racks of folding chairs and sporting a sleek black Steinway baby grand.